The very worst of this season of ‘True Detective’

Warning: This story contains spoilers for the second season of “True Detective.” Of course, the show already did a great job of spoiling itself.

Sunday night’s season finale of “True Detective” had a few great moments.

If you’d already abandoned all hope of a coherent plot in which writer/creator Nic Pizzolatto’s characters acted in a rational fashion, it had even more great moments, including a second instance of a pregnancy turning a woman psychic.

The story, a convoluted mess involving orgies, industrial pollution, human trafficking, jewel thieves and a light-rail corridor, tried for hard-boiled but wound up hard to swallow.

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This “True Detective” installment was so uneven, it can only be embraced as camp. The fatal mistake of having four acting leads was just compounded by unnecessary tangents, heavy-handed fatherhood metaphors, gratuitous bloodshed and some of the most ridiculous dialogue to be uttered on a prestige channel like HBO.

The whole eight-episode exercise was unfair to everyone involved. Especially poor Vince Vaughn. As Frank Semyon, a gangster trying to go legit, he had an uphill battle all season. Whenever Frank strode into a room, he was going to say something menacing, quippy or nonsensical — usually all of the above, with some casual racism and SAT-worthy vocabulary thrown in for good measure.

“You can’t act for (squat),” Frank’s wife told him Sunday night when he tried to make her flee town by being mean.

But Vaughn actually did the best he could with lines like “Sometimes your worst self is your best self. Know what I’m saying?” Not really, man.

At one point, he asks one of his henchmen, “You know the word ‘louche’?” Sure, buddy. Doesn’t every underground criminal?

Part of the reason Matthew McConaughey’s “time is a flat circle” philosophizing worked so well in Season 1 was the presence of Woody Harrelson, who was around to tell him to stop talking like that in front of people. Season 2 had nobody to temper its bizarre monologues. Vaughn got the worst of it, but Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch were saddled with some doozies, too.